FIFA has opened two separate tender processes for the sub-Saharan Africa media rights to the lads’s FIFA World Cup 2026 and FIFA Girls’s World Cup 2027.
Media organisations will put ahead their proposals to world soccer’s governing physique to acquire the rights for the expanded 2026 males’s match, which will probably be hosted in Canada, Mexico, and the USA, and can function a file 48 nations.
The bigger format will encompass 104 matches, double the variety of the knock-out stage matches within the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, as FIFA appears to be like to eke additional revenues out of its most globally watched and profitable occasion.
The Confederation of African Soccer (CAF) can have a assured 9 representatives on the subsequent FIFA World Cup, whereas a tenth might qualify via FIFA’s intercontinental play-off match.
The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 was the very best FIFA World Cup ever for African groups. Morocco turned the primary African nation to achieve the semi-finals of the match, Senegal superior to the spherical of 16, and Cameroon, Ghana, and Tunisia every recorded group stage wins.
In response to FIFA’s 2022 funds, worldwide TV broadcast rights for the final World Cup have been anticipated to usher in $2.64bn.
All 64 matches have been broadcast reside throughout sub-Saharan Africa solely on pay-TV platforms New World TV and SuperSport. New World TV broadcast video games to 19 French talking sub-Saharan international locations, whereas SuperSport broadcast to over 40 international locations in English. New World additionally broadcast in in native dialects together with Wolof, Lingala, Bambara and Ewe.
Twenty-eight matches have been broadcast reside by main native free-to-air broadcasters throughout the area. The free-to-air video games have been delivered by way of sub-licensing agreements with Media Enterprise Options, the unique agent of New World TV, whereas SABC was the native free-to-air broadcaster in South Africa.
Girls’s occasion positive aspects in significance
Broadcasters may even bid on the FIFA Girls’s World Cup in 2027, the host of which will probably be selected 17 Might 2024 by the FIFA Congress. FIFA has confirmed expressions of curiosity to host the match from South Africa and Brazil, in addition to joint approaches from Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands and the USA and Mexico.
The Girls’s World Cup is an more and more widespread and profitable occasion in FIFA’s calendar as worldwide curiosity in ladies’s soccer mounts. FIFA reported that this 12 months’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand broke data for ticket gross sales, broadcast figures and digital media knowledge.
The match marked the primary time that broadcast rights have been offered individually in lots of markets, however the Wall Road Journal reported that gross sales had fallen round $100m wanting FIFA’s $300m goal. New World TV and SuperSport have been the sub-Saharan African broadcasters, with New World dealing with free-to-air licensing.
Three of Africa’s 4 representatives superior to the knockout part and all 4 received a World Cup match for the primary time in historical past.
The bid submission deadlines for each tournaments is Wednesday 13 December.
